Introduction to ACT
A client-facing introduction to Acceptance and Commitment Therapy: why struggling with difficult thoughts and feelings often makes things worse, and how ACT helps people build a rich life alongside them rather than waiting for them to go away.
About this resource
Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), developed by Steven Hayes and colleagues, is a contextual behavioural approach that targets psychological inflexibility rather than symptom content. Its central claim is that much human suffering is driven not by painful thoughts and feelings themselves but by experiential avoidance: the attempt to control, suppress or escape private experiences, which tends to amplify them and narrows the person's life. ACT aims to increase psychological flexibility through six interrelated processes: acceptance, cognitive defusion, present-moment awareness, self-as-context, values and committed action.
This handout introduces the model in everyday language. It begins with the observation that most clients arrive having tried very hard to feel better, and that the trying has not worked. It reframes this not as failure but as evidence that the control agenda is the problem. It then introduces the alternative: making room for difficult experiences, stepping back from thoughts, and putting energy into what matters. The handout does not attempt to teach all six processes in detail; its job is to shift the client's understanding of what therapy is for and to establish the workability question as the guiding principle.
The professional version includes a brief overview of the six processes and the hexaflex, notes on creative hopelessness and how to conduct it without inducing despair, and guidance on common misunderstandings (that acceptance means resignation, or that ACT ignores thoughts).
How to use it
- Use in the first or second session, after the client has described what they have tried in order to feel better and how well it has worked.
- Read together. Pause at the section on the control agenda and ask the client to list their own strategies and their short-term and long-term results. This is the creative hopelessness conversation.
- Introduce the workability question explicitly: not 'is this thought true?' but 'is doing what this thought says taking me toward the life I want?'
- Follow with an experiential exercise in the same session where possible (a brief defusion or mindfulness practice), so the client experiences the alternative rather than only hearing about it.
- Move to Values Clarification early. ACT without values becomes a set of coping techniques; the values give the acceptance a purpose.
References
- Hayes, S. C., Strosahl, K. D., & Wilson, K. G. (2012). Acceptance and Commitment Therapy: The Process and Practice of Mindful Change (2nd ed.). Guilford Press.
- Hayes, S. C., Luoma, J. B., Bond, F. W., Masuda, A., & Lillis, J. (2006). Acceptance and Commitment Therapy: Model, processes and outcomes. Behaviour Research and Therapy, 44(1), 1-25.
- Harris, R. (2019). ACT Made Simple (2nd ed.). New Harbinger.
- A-Tjak, J. G. L., et al. (2015). A meta-analysis of the efficacy of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy for clinically relevant mental and physical health problems. Psychotherapy and Psychosomatics, 84(1), 30-36.
